Chapter 9 - Across the Rhine

On the night of the 26th of March at about 1800 we were told to mount up and prepare to move out. We climbed up into our track, arranged the gear inside and I placed my gun into the left side pintle and slipped in the hinge pin.

I dropped a box of ammunition into the gun mount bracket, popped the lid back and threaded the belt feed tab through the loading port on the left side of the receiver. I then pulled the bolt back once to secure the ammunition belt in the feed pawls of the gun but didn't pull it back a second time to put a round in the chamber. I preferred to run with the gun not fully cocked as a safety precaution since if I needed to fire it would only take a split second to chamber a round. I locked the mount with the gun facing forward and sat down and made myself comfortable for the long drive through the night that lay ahead. Within a few minutes Pastewka cranked up the motor and we slowly pulled out into a column and headed east. I later learned that the division was in a column of combat commands with CCA leading, CCR second and CCB bringing up the rear.

As we moved east the muttering of artillery got louder and louder. After grinding and clanking along for about three or four hours we got close enough to the Rhine to hear the reports of individual artillery pieces. We could see the glow of searchlights and the flashes of the big guns reflecting off of the overcast. We eventually crested a rise and there below us, a about three quarters of a mile away lay, the Rhine River. To our right we could make out a pontoon bridge in the reflected light of the antiaircraft searchlights. At each end there was a column of tracer streaks reaching vertically up into the night. The diameter of the columns must have been five or six hundred yards and it looked as if several hundred machine guns and 20 mm and 40 mm cannons were locked into a vertical position. They were firing continuously to provide an impenetrable screen at each end of the bridge thereby discouraging the German aircraft flying overhead from making a strafing or bomb run down the length of the bridge.

A German plane roared right over our track and it sounded as if we could reach up and touch him. When I caught a glimpse of him in the reflected light he was at least 200 feet above us. We could see the vehicles ahead of us slowly making their way up the shore ramp and onto the bridge. They were only moving about five miles an hour and the engineers were keeping them spaced out about 100 feet apart. Even so the individual pontoons bobbed up and down perceptibly as the each tank or track passed over it. It took about fifteen minutes for us to work our way down the road that the engineers had cut into the river bluff. We were going south nearly parallel to the river until we reached the river plain that separated the river from the bluff by 70 yards. We swung to the left and slowly climbed up onto the ramp leading to the bridge. The bridge seemed to be nearly 800 yards long and as we crept onto it an engineer standing at the river end of the ramp caution us to not exceed 5 mph and to keep our spacing. The whole procedure fascinated me since I had never crossed so long a temporary bridge.

When we rolled off the east end of the bridge the second rifle squad's half-track had already sped off into the night and disappeared from sight. Pastewka sped up to as fast as he could go under the condition of little light and a rough temporary road. About 100 yards to the east of the river we swung south parallel to the river and charged along looking for the front of the convoy. We had just swung east again and started towards a railway embankment when we caught up with the track ahead. We had slowed down to about fifteen miles per hour when we reached the culvert under the rail tracks. Fortunately Pastewka saw that the road had a huge crater blown by the Germans in the shadow of the railroad tracks and slammed on the brakes. We crept up the to crater and the front of the track dropped down.

Pastewka engaged the front wheel drive, dropped into compound low and we slowly ground into the crater and up the other side. Shifting back into track only drive we took off to catch up with the second rifle squad. I was looking back at the culvert, which I could see as a gray blob against the dark background of the railroad embankment. I soon made out the night running lights of the mortar squad's track and realized that it was still running fast to catch up. I yelled but the mortar squad couldn't hear over the rattle of armor plate and the roar of the motors. With horror I saw the dark silhouette of the track with the two driving lights plunge into the crater and then leap out so that the whole vehicle could be seen nose up, nearly vertical with its rear bumper and luggage rack above the plane of the road. There was a crash so loud that we could hear it over the road noise of the convoy. Big Al had swung around at my scream and saw the mortar track crash to the ground. Al yelled at Pastewka to stop and back up to the accident. When we dismounted we found the track had stalled on impact and that all of the exterior racks had sheared off. The mortar squad members were out of the track and most were lying by the side of the road.

The third platoon's lead vehicle arrived at the accident just after we did and their lieutenant radioed Captain Malarkey to inform him of the accident and ask for an ambulance. Pastewka got into the track and was able to get the motor started and after checking to see that everyone was clear moved it forward a few yards and then back it to its original spot. The rest of us were checking our buddies and found that only one was seriously hurt and the other seven could probably go on. By that time about twenty-five of us had gathered at the scene so it took only a few minutes to take all the mines, mortar rounds and personal belongings of the squad and dump them into the half-track. We helped the shocked but otherwise uninjured into the front of the track or onto the pile in the back of the track. The ambulance arrived, and we helped load the injured man into it and we all took off again. I think they had an MP stand by the underpass the rest of the night with a flashlight to warn the oncoming vehicles of the danger.

By the time we got moving again we had again lost touch with the front of the column. Pastewka started down the road again trying to make up the fifteen minutes we had been delayed. After being up most of the night and the work of assisting the mortar squad I was sleepy and fell asleep with the bill of my helmet hooked over the muzzle of my carbine which was braced between my feet. This kept me from pitching into the guys seated opposite me when the track made a sharp left turn or got on a steep slope with the right side of the track downhill. I must have been asleep for nearly an hour when I woke up to find the track in a ditch in the woods and most of the squad out figuring out what to do. I figured that eleven guys were enough to solve the problem so I went back to sleep. I think they had to move the mortar track ahead of us and hook on to it with the winch to get us out. When I woke up again dawn was breaking and we had stopped in some woods with the front of the company about fifty yards inside the eastern edge. It looked like we were halted for a while so I ate a "K" ration. As long as food is available I always ate whenever I could. At nearly six feet in height and only 150 pounds my only weight problem was that I was to skinny.

After I finished eating I started scouting around our position with the rest of the squad. We soon found a line of foxholes a few yards in from the wood's edge. The 30th Infantry Division had crossed the Rhine in this sector and I guess this was the first line of effective German resistance they had encountered. Most of the Germans nearer the river had been so shocked by the artillery barrage and bombing that they hadn't been able to mount much of a defense close to the river. The four bodies of GIs in the foxholes seemed to have killed by artillery rounds exploding in the trees above their foxholes. After a pause of a half an hour we mounted up and moved forward about a quarter of a mile and stopped again. Next to our track was the body of another GI. He had taken a direct hit from an artillery shell that had blown most of the flesh off of his rib cage and blown an arm away. We then moved forward about a mile and stopped again. After several short moves to the east we finally stopped for the night and bedded down in a field. The next morning we mounted up and moved a few more miles toward the east.

While waiting to move forward we dismounted and sat by the side of the road. An infantryman from the 30th Inf. Div. came walking up the road and sat down next to us. We talked for a while and he told me he had walked all the way from Normandy except for a hundred-mile truck ride during the Ardennes. I could see that this was one tired dogface. He soon got up and started off down the road toward the front of column. While sitting there I decided to try a German ration of cheese that I had found that morning. The cheese was wrapped in foil and I unwrapped one end of the round, five-inch long stick. I had never smelled as strong or pungent an odor and it was more than I could stomach so I threw it away after offering it to several members of the squad and being turned down.

We moved forward another little way and stopped again. Shortly later five 105 mm self propelled Priests came driving down the road and swung off into a field and then swung around to face east. The first Priest raised it's gun to about 40 degrees and fired a round. As soon as the other guns were in position all five fired a quick four or five rounds, dropped the muzzles of their guns and returned to the road and slowly moved east down the road. I wondered how the last four guns had picked up their firing information from the first gun. Obviously they had succeeded in their firing mission. What amazed me was how fast they had registered on the target and how rapidly they fired the four or five rounds each gun fired. The whole thing only took about a minute from the time the Priest had turned off the road. Later I was to see other demonstrations of how good our artillery was. We then mounted up and moved out again.

We moved down the road about three miles and came out onto an open field about a half-mile wide. At the far side of the field a column of tanks was moving parallel to the east edge of the field firing repeatedly up into a ridge about 300 feet high and covered with trees. The tanks were blowing down many of these trees as they moved slowly south at about five miles per hour. We trundled forward, made a right turn and followed the tanks. Not a shot was fired at us as we moved around the southern end of the ridge and headed east. I can't remember whether I fired a single shot all day. It was now getting dark and we paused again and dismounted on the top of a barren hill. It began to rain as we prepared to stay here for the night. The company formed the half-tracks into a circle of about 400 yards diameter and began digging in for the night. The rain continued with increasing intensity. I dug a slit trench about six feet long, two feet wide and two feet deep. Since I didn't have to pull guard duty, I ate a 'C' ration, climbed into my hole and went to sleep. Later that night some large caliber artillery shelled us and it awakened me. I peeked out of the hole and saw in the flashes that none of the tracks seemed to have been hit by the first salvo. I did note that my hole had nearly eight inches of rainwater in it and that it was still pouring down. I moved towards the head of my hole, propped my head up against the side of the hole, put my feet up on the outside of the hole and went back to sleep.

The next morning we moved forward into a large town. We first passed through a large factory area and turned right along a road parallel to a canal. The head of the column was attempting to secure a crossing and the rear of the column halted on the road. We got a few shots fired at us from the factory debris so we dismounted. One of the antitank half-tracks behind us got hit and started burning. Our half-track got a flat on the front right wheel and Pastewka pulled off the road and started replacing the wheel. A fifty-caliber machine gun, which had been locked in its ring mount facing forward on the burning antitank track, started cooking off and fifty caliber slugs plunged down the column, barely clearing the tracks in front. Fortunately the column turned to the left out of the line of fire before the trajectory of the bullets carried them low enough to strike one of the vehicles. I was sitting in the ditch about twenty feet from our track watching Pastewka wrestling with the wheel change. I think he weighed about 140 pounds and the front wheel of a half-track weighed between 75 and 100 pounds. After a twenty minute struggle he got the wheel changed and the flat stored.

It got a little quieter so I decided to walk down the road toward the head of the column and see what was holding us up. I had gone about 50 yards toward the front of the column and was nearly up to the next vehicle when I heard the distant thump of a mortar firing. I turned and sprinted back toward the machine gun track. The first round hit where I had turned to run which was now ten yards behind me. The next round landed even closer and I realized that the next would land close enough to kill me so I skidded to a stop a jumped into the roadside ditch. Sure enough the next round landed on the road between my track and me. I crawled down the ditch toward my track while waiting to see if any more mortar rounds were coming in. As a lay there in the ditch a sniper fired at me and grazed my buttocks. It felt like someone had hit me with a bullwhip. The last fifteen minutes had been too much for me and I panicked and started yelling for some one to throw me a shovel. Some one yelled back, "For Christ's sake Odgers, use your own shovel." I calmed down, got out my entrenching tool and within minutes had dug myself about four feet down. I lay there and re-gathered my composure. Obviously someone had an excellent view of our position and for the next twenty minutes we were very careful about exposing ourselves.

We soon got the order to move forward across the canal into the town. We hadn't gone more than a quarter mile when we found ourselves amongst German infantry and the fight started. One of the squad saw a German running down a side street and swung around and fired his M1 at him. The muzzle of the M1 was only a few inches from my ear when he fired and I had trouble hearing for the next few days. I later got even with the rifleman who has deafened me. About a week later he had his head up looking over the left side of the track when I saw a group of Germans running away from the track behind us and I swung the gun around and fired a burst of twenty rounds at them. The muzzle of the gun was right next to his helmet when I started firing and it took him a split second to pull his head away so his ears got a terrible thumping. It wasn't deliberate but I never was able to convince him of that.

Soon after losing most of my hearing the column stopped and we were ordered to dismount and advance down the road. We had gone a few blocks and I was still woozy and my ears were ringing when we moved out into the clear along a four-foot high wall. Across the wall was a field with a few houses and a Panther tank. I could see the tank commander's head sticking out of the turret but he was looking away from us. Captain Malarkey was peaking over the wall as I closed up on the front of the column. He whispered at a sergeant a few feet from me to grab the bazooka a private was carrying and to follow him out onto the field. I couldn't really hear what was going on because of the ringing in my ears, but it was obvious what the captain wanted. The Sargent started to say something but Malarkey cut him short, pulled out his two pistols and went over the wall. The two of them ran to within 100 yards of the tank where the captain stopped. It then became obvious that the sergeant had been trying to tell the captain that he didn't know how to fire a bazooka. The tank commander heard the ensuing animated conversation over the rumble of his motor and he swung around to peer at the captain and the sergeant.

Malarkey raised both pistols and pulled the triggers. Two misfires. The pistols were tossed into the air and both the sergeant and the captain took off for the protection of the nearest house. I couldn't get my gun up onto the wall fast enough to do anything but I tried. The sight of the two men dashing across the field while the tank's turret slowly revolved around to bear on them froze everyone else. Just as the two reached the shelter of a house the tank fired and hit the corner that the men had ducked behind. The shell took what looked like a giant mouse bite out of the corner. The two only got a heavy dusting of debris from the shot. By this time we were all firing at the tank and he slowly backed away from us.

We then fought our way to the far side of the town. I crawled across the back yard of a house on the edge of town to a line of bushes. Ray Baumer was next to me when we reached the bushes and slowly worked our way through them. We were on the top of a six-foot drop to an open field of about five acres. There was one home in the middle of the field. Ray whispered to watch out for the tank. I asked what tank and he said, "Jesus Irv, can't you see it, it's right next to the house." I looked and looked and couldn't see it, then the tank commander moved and my eyes picked up a Panther tank sitting less than 200 yards from me. I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it. I told Ray to stay put and I crawled back through the bushes and ran back looking for a tank destroyer. It took about five minutes to find a light tank destroyer and I ran up to him and told him what we had found. I told him I'd lead him up to where he could get a shot. He asked me what kind of tank it was and when I told him it was a Panther he looked at me, said thanks for the information and backed hurriedly away. I was a little astonished but I guess that he felt that for him to move up on a Panther and get a clean shot was next to impossible. The rest of the task force moved up to the east edge of town and artillery was called in to drive off the tank. We then moved out across the field and started up a hill.

We were spread out in a skirmish line and had gone about 200 yards past where the tank had been when we approached a house that had been hit by shells. I could hear agonizing sobbing coming from the house as I darted through the front door. In front of me was a young woman kneeling next the body of a much older man. I assume that they were father and daughter. I stopped and tried to comfort her but there wasn't any time to do much and a few minutes later I went out the back door and continued on my way. As we continued up the hill in the fading light of day I thought what a lousy thing war was. This was the first time I had seen civilian casualties so soon after a death and the girl's grief made a deep impression on me.

When the company reached the top of the hill we were told that we were to dig in and prepare to spend the night on the hill. We arranged ourselves in defensive position and started digging in. As darkness fell we ate the last of the food we had brought across the Rhine. A figure came up from behind asking if we were 'C' Company and sat down on what he thought was a log. He sat on a corpse and jumped up with a yell. I never did find out why he was up with us because there was a tremendous explosion about 200 yards from us. A track bringing up replacements had taking a direct hit from a mortar and the mines in the racks had gone off in a sympathetic detonation. The track was collapsed inward killing everybody aboard. I was tired from the days fighting and my ears were still ringing, but I could now hear loud voices. I crawled into my slit trench and fell into exhausted sleep.

The next morning we started east again attacking small villages and moving across fields. We had run out of food by this time and we started scrounging for anything we could eat. We had gathered several eggs and were carrying them in a steel helmet. We also were able to talk a tank crew out of a case of 'C' rations that lasted for a day. During the afternoon we reached a small cluster of buildings about a 1000 yards west of Recklinghausen. A railroad track ran north and south east of the houses and commercial buildings. A road ran parallel to the railroad and a crossroad led to Recklinghausen. The road to Recklinghausen was at the bottom of a little valley with hills rising on each side to heights about a hundred feet above the road. About 200 yards down the road east was a small group of houses with a concrete house that might have been a pump house or other utility to the north of the road to Recklinghausen. To the south of the road a row of shrubs marked the western edge of a large field just to the west of Recklinghausen. The shrubs ran all the way from the small group of houses to the top of the hill to the south. My platoon was dismounted and on foot. One of the of the rifle squads climbed up on the backs of several tanks as we prepared to attack the road junction.

The tanks moved out and we followed about a hundred yards behind. The tanks reached the north-south running road to the south of the junction and turned north, disappearing behind the houses around the road junction. There was a burst of German machine gun fire. Its high cyclic rate made an easily identified sound. Then there was an explosion. By this time we had advanced far enough for me to see a tank on the road to Recklinghausen disabled and smoking. The lieutenant in the turret had pulled his forty-five and killed the German who had just hit his tank with a Panzerfaust. As I watched, the lieutenant dived headfirst off the tank and into the roadside ditch. The burst of machine gun fire had killed one of the GIs on the tank. The other infantry had bailed off just before the Panzerfaust hit. Only one other GI had been hit. As the rest of the crew abandoned their tank we moved up to the railroad embankment and deployed.

I had just reached the track and was placing my gun so I could fire to the east when Drost who had placed his gun ten yards to my left was taken under fire. A round hit his ammunition box and the spent bullet and the fragments of brass and steel from the box hit him in the left shoulder and made hamburger of his shoulder muscles. As the medic attended to Drost the rest of the platoon took the houses just to the east under fire and prepared to assault across the field. Realizing that I couldn't give them covering fire from where I was because they would mask me off as soon as they started the assault I picked up my gun and moved about fifty yards to the north and past the road junction. I looked for a place to put my gun with a field of fire that would dominate the whole area between the company and the houses to the east. The place I picked certainly satisfied that requirement but wasn't the smartest choice I ever made. I ran across the tracks and climbed up to the top of a five-foot pile of coal. I started sweeping the whole area in front of me with grazing fire for the fields on both sides of the road and direct fire at the windows and doors of the houses in front of us.

Ray had started cutting the ammunition belts in half so that as I swung the gun around the belt wouldn't pick up to much coal dust and jam the gun. This meant that I had to lift the gun's receiver cover to feed in the tail end half of the ammunition belts. Each time I fired the muzzle blast created a small cloud of coal dust. I hadn't been firing for more than a few minutes when a rifle bullet hit the top of the coal pile right between the gun's bi-pod and me and scattered coal chips all over me. I continued firing and another hit scattered more coal on me. This must have been the same German that had hit Drost. I was getting very uneasy as I bent down to get another belt of ammunition. As I brought my head up I had a glimpse from the corner of my eye of something headed for me. By reflex I ducked. There was the sharp crack of a bullet passing within inches of my ears and I knew exactly where my tormentor was. He was about half way up the hill in the shrubs to the south of the houses. I pulled the gun back off the top of my coal pile, loaded a new partial belt and came out firing. I sprayed the shrubs with a burst of twenty five rounds. This stopped him and I wasn't bothered again. He probably figured I was under God's special protection.

The platoon was now ready for the assault and we seemed to have suppressed most of the enemy's firing. A tank started down the road with the second platoon in a scrimmage line to my right. I was able to cover them all the way up to the houses. As the rifle squads reached the houses the mortar squad started moving forward and I picked up my gun and started forward. I was so relieved at not being hit by the sniper that I let out a yell. Dominic, the mortar squad leader, who was about ten yards in front of me, hit the ground in the roadside ditch. As I ran past him he gave me a dirty look and asked what I was yelling about. I yelled back that I was just feeling good and he started after me cursing me for having scared him. As I ran past the disabled tank and the dead German, his body was still crouched on his knees, as he had been when the lieutenant had shot him. A few paces farther on I saw an unexploded rifle grenade that I recognized. A rifleman from one of our rifle squads had been carrying the grenade around on his grenade launcher since we had crossed the Rhine. He had replaced the safety pin with a Nazi party lapel pin and had fired the grenade without removing the distinctive pin. The next time I saw him I really razzed him about his oversight.

When I got to the houses I left the gun with Ray and Tony and walked up the line of shrubs to the south of the houses. Screened by the shrubs I walked all the way to the top of the hill peering through the shrubs. I couldn't find a trace of the sniper so I guess we were a mutual missing society. When we got back to the houses the platoon was receiving sporadic rifle fire from the east.

After staring at the houses on the west side of Recklinghausen I thought that one house, set a little closer than the rest, was a potential source of the rifle fire. I went down to the houses, found Ray, borrowed my old rifle from him and went about twenty yards up the hill. Using the shrub line for cover I set the rifle sights for 600 yards and started putting rounds through the windows of the suspicious house. I don't know whether I hit anybody but it was a good practice in long range marksmanship. I didn't see a single impact around the windows so I think all of my shots went through the window. I then went back to the houses.

When I entered the house where Ray and Tony were a new replacement was firing at something up on the hill to our north. I walked over and could see a German's arm waving in the air about 400 yards up the hill. The replacement fired another round at the waving arm. I told him the German was probably wounded and to leave him alone. He started to fire again and I yelled at him to cut it out and pointed the machine gun at him. He lowered his rifle as I explained to him that I didn't approve of shooting at wounded, and I felt most of the rest of the platoon felt the same way. After a few minutes I asked the medic if he'd go with me if I went up to check on the German. He thought for about ten seconds and said, "Sure, let's go." As we started out the door about ten, or nearly everyone in the room, followed. One fellow grabbed a stretcher from a peep that had moved up to our position.

We started up the hill in a closely bunched group casting glances to our right towards the enemy. As we reached the wounded man he started calling out, "Ich habe kinder." He looked terrified as we walked up to him. I had hit him in the thigh when I was giving covering fire for the platoon. He was a man of about thirty-five and was obviously relieved when the medic kneeled down and started cutting his pants leg off. It took about ten minutes to clean the wound and put compress bandages on the entrance and exit wounds. It appeared that the bullet had missed the bone and major arteries. We loaded him onto the stretcher and a couple of riflemen slung their rifles, picked up the stretcher and back down the hill we went. The war had stopped for a half-hour as we succored our enemy. To this day I have never regretted any act of compassion on my part during the war. Though I know that both sides were guilty of viciously inhumane acts I never permitted them around me and I think I had the support of most of my companions.

That night we slept in the cluster of houses. During the night we could hear the deep throb of diesel engines and the clank of the treads of German tanks as they moved their armor under the concealment of darkness. Except for the sound of the tanks the night was quiet. There was neither small arms nor artillery fire. I slept after the German panzers stopped milling around. At time the tanks seemed as though they were right next to our house but this was due to the overall quietness of the night and I'm sure the tanks were in Recklinghausen. At the first light of morning we spread out along the line of shrubs and waited for orders.

After we had been lying in our shrubbery concealment for a short time the word was passed that we were to be pulled out of the line and the an infantry division was to relieve us and assault the city down the road. A short time later I saw a battalion of infantry moving up to our position. There was a column on either side of the road and most of them were weaving along as though they were drunk. This was the first time I had every watched another outfit during their approach march. Leading the battalion was a scout staggering down the middle of the road so drunk he could barely walk. As they passed through us they stayed in a column. The scout hadn't gone more than twenty yards past us when the head of the column started receiving small arms fire. Instantly the infantrymen seemed to sober up and took to the roadside ditches. The only fellow that seemed still to be drunk was the scout and he continued to stagger towards Recklinhausen. We all started giving covering fire and as most of the battalion slowed down and began moving forward cautiously. A sergeant jumped into the left-hand ditch and ran after the scout. Every time a German exposed himself to fire at the staggering scout, the sergeant fired at the German. The scout was weaving so erratically that he was able to stagger over two hundred yards down the road. The sergeant finally caught up to him and pulled him off the road and the two of them made it back to the rest of the battalion.

We were told to move back and mount up for our next movement. We had crossed the Rhine on the 26th and it was now the 31st. Though we had been in action only three days we had been on the move for five days and I was getting tired.